not help it. But I have heard them. As to you, Mr.
McIntyre, I believe that you speak from your own bad heart. I will not
let myself be moved by your words. In Robert I have a true friend. Laura
also loves me for my own sake. You cannot shake my faith in them. But
with you, Mr. McIntyre, I have nothing in common; and it is as well,
perhaps, that we should both recognise the fact."

He bowed, and was gone ere either of the McIntyres could say a word.

"You see!" said Robert at last. "You have done now what you cannot
undo!"

"I will be even with him!" cried the old man furiously, shaking his
fist through the window at the dark slow-pacing figure. "You just wait,
Robert, and see if your old dad is a man to be played with."

CHAPTER XIII. A MIDNIGHT VENTURE.

Not a word was said to Laura when she returned as to the scene which had
occurred in her absence. She was in the gayest of spirits, and prattled
merrily about her purchases and her arrangements, wondering from time
to time when Raffles Haw would come. As night fell, however, without any
word from him, she became uneasy.

"What can be the matter that he does not come?" she said. "It is the
first day since our engagement that I have not seen him."

Robert looked out through the window.

"It is a gusty night, and raining hard," he remarked. "I do not at all
expect him."

"Poor Hector used to come, rain, snow, or fine. But, then, of course, he
was a sailor. It was nothing to him. I hope that Raffles is not ill."

"He was quite well when I saw him this morning," answered her brother,
and they relapsed into silence, while the rain pattered against the
windows, and the wind screamed amid the branches of the elms outside.

Old McIntyre had sat in the corner most of the day biting his nails and
glowering into the fire, with a brooding, malignant expression upon his
wrinkled features. Contrary to his usual habits, he did not go to
the village inn, but shuffled off early to bed without a word to his
children. Laura and Robert remained chatting for some time by the fire,
she talking of the thousand and one wonderful things which were to be
done when she was mistress of the New Hall. There was less philanthropy
in her talk when her future husband was absent, and Robert could not but
remark that her carriages, her dresses, her receptions, and her travels
in distant countries were the topics into which she threw all the
enthusiasm which he had formerly heard her